When you hear the word selfishness what comes to mind? Typically, selfishness is associated with amoral, predatory behavior. It’s a word used to describe people like Bernard Madoff or Attila the Hun. On the other hand, selflessness is generally celebrated and aligned with friendship and love. In this talk, Peter Schwartz challenges these misconceptions.
Don’t forget to tune in this Monday, May 25, to an all new episode of The Yaron Brook Show. We often think of the men and women in the military as sacrificing for the rest of us. Are we right to do so? Or can serving in the military properly be self-interested? Yaron takes up this issue and others.
The Debt Dialogues is a weekly podcast that aims to educate young people about the welfare state and how it will affect their future. In this episode, I interview Claremont Review of Books senior editor William Voegeli on his recent book The Pity Party: A Mean-Spirited Diatribe Against Liberal Compassion.
Ayn Rand is known as a champion of the virtue of selfishness. Most believe, however, that selfishness is incompatible with benevolence, kindness and goodwill towards others. What is the relationship between benevolence and the selfishness that Ayn Rand advocates? That is the question ARI instructor Aaron Smith will explore in a series of talks he will be giving across the country.
This Monday, April 6, Yaron returns to host an all new episode of his radio show. Yaron will give his take on how the fight goes for freedom and capitalism in South America, where he recently spent several weeks. Yaron will also chat with Ayn Rand Institute instructor Aaron Smith about whether Ayn Rand’s morality of rational selfishness is consistent with good will and benevolence toward other people.
On Monday, February 23, Yaron Brook will talk about the virtues of rational selfishness as presented in Ayn Rand’s essay “The Objectivist Ethics” in The Virtue of Selfishness.
Don’t forget to tune in Monday, February 16 for an all new episode of Yaron Brook’s radio show, where Yaron will continue his discussion of the meaning of selfishness and how to practice it.
Don’t forget to tune in Monday, February 9 for an all new episode of Yaron Brook’s radio show, where Yaron will talk about selfishness vs. altruism. Topics will include: What it means to be selfish; examples of selfishness in the world today; why altruism is immoral.
For decades intellectuals have struggled to understand Nazi Germany. How could a country known as the “land of poets and philosophers” turn into a nation of killers? In The Cause of Hitler’s Germany — a republication of a portion of The Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America, first published in 1982 — Objectivist philosopher Leonard Peikoff provides the answer.
In the PJTV video I talked about yesterday, Bill Whittle and Andrew Klavan also criticize Rand for confusing selflessness and altruism. Selflessness doesn’t exist, Klavan says, because "everyone is acting for personal gain, even if that personal gain is joy" from helping others. Altruism then is simply doing good for others in order to gain joy, which Klavan stresses is a good thing.
